I truly mean this in an entirely non-judgemental way. I wish the author luck in achieving his dream of becoming high agency rather than simply high freedom. I wish it for everyone who wants it.
The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.
The cringe comes in with the way he does it. He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.
It’s amazing how even millionaires and billionaires don’t understand that national debt doesn’t work like personal debt.
But anyway, that’s a tangent. The guy dumped his girlfriend so he has no family to spend time with, and he’s wondering why he’s bored. His only attempts at stimulation involve self-service: how can I be smart and successful especially in a way that everyone will know it?
I can only imagine how being financially set for life would positively impact a typical fiscally responsible family (people with the restraint to hire a financial advisor). Imagine being able to cancel daycare and spend your days with your family instead of burning your life away in the office.
I even know a person who has no children but thanks to a windfall just does his hobbies and hangs out with friends. Still works a day job for health insurance but now work doesn’t define their life. They’ve done things like learn how to DJ and travel to see their international friends on longer visits and not just little two week vacations that corporate zombies get to take.
But the author is struggling to find a way to make work define their life, to get their life to return to capitalism that they have been blessed to escape.
Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
"Within 2 minutes of talking to the final interviewer for DOGE, he asked me if I wanted to join. I said “yes”. Then he said “cool” and I was in multiple Signal groups."
DOGE is run on Signal, and his conclusion is "so smart," not "that seems like a huge red flag." This guy sounds like he's in line to be the next George Papadopoulos, the guy who gets thrown under the bus when everything goes sideways.
So the fact that they think it's a good idea to just start a bunch of chats on Signal should be surprising, but it's Trump and Elon, so I guess it's just another thing in a long list of insane things that just happen, and we just kind of ignore them and pretend that everything is fine.
The signal of using signal for running the business is that by working there you’re likely committing a crime every day by working there. If you’re not DJT’s bff, or when Elon gets kicked out of cool kids club, you’re boned.
> The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.
It seems like a lot to assume that suggests the author is not a fast technical learner and builder.
> Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.
That sounds like good advice for me, but not to the author. I sometimes follow orders from random people for fun, but I infer that the author does not.
The author traveled off the paved path. Reality gave him with wealth and time, but unsatisfaction instead of satisfaction. His role is now to figure out a path back to satisfaction, perhaps it will be a short path or a long path, a common one or a one the world hasn't seen before.
People often find a similar lack of purpose (albeit much, much shorter lived) after being engrossed in a book series, very hard video game, or any other pursuit.
The big difference here, IMO, is this is a game that society is literally constructed around - for its own survival. The ‘rat race’ puts food on everyone’s table, provides care when we’re sick, defines what future our children can have (and if we can even have children) - even what rights we have (or don’t have) in many cases.
Is it so surprising that having won that game, some people - often the ones most obsessed with it - struggle to figure out what is next?
Unless you think one can choose to be a "fast technical leaner and builder", then that is still luck.
At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting as to where we should start respecting this "consent"? Do you want to undo any previous actions or should we just take whatever arbitrary power structures we've landed on and start? C'mon, this is ridiculous.
We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating. Your right to consent (or not) sometimes doesn't exist because society takes priority. There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
> At what arbitrary point would you like to start counting
There is no need to keep count. We are all born into this world with no possessions, and we all negotiate with those already here for everything we come to own. It is true that people and circumstances vary widely, but that doesn't provide legitimacy for one person's claim over another (equal) person's legitimate good fortune.
> We live in a society which, by definition, requires multiple people participating
It is exactly the nature of this participation which I am litigating. I hold that it should be maximally voluntary and consensual. The only justified violation of fundamental liberty is in defense of liberty itself. Drafting people into the army (effectively enslaving them) is justified in direct defense of the nation (not to attack eg. Vietnam). Redistributing legitimate (earned through consensual exchange) wealth by force simply doesn't pass this test.
> There is no high philosophy here, it's just the reality of how things work. Get over it.
Funnily enough this is the exact sort of reasoning has been used to rationalize the most horrific atrocities ever perpetrated.
Then why should we take this seriously? Some huge disparities in outcomes in this world are the consequence of "international conflict". What do you want to do about Native Americans in the USA, for example?
> We are all born into this world with no possessions, and we all negotiate with those already here for everything we come to own.
This is not meaningfully true. If you are born into a rich family, you almost certainly are going to live a life with more access than those who are not. If you are born into a country with socialized medicine you are going to have access to opportunities that someone who isn't does not. We are not born equal in any way that is meaningful.
> It is exactly the nature of this participation which I am litigating. I hold that it should be maximally voluntary and consensual.
It isn't and can't be. Any right of consent you are given in society is society choosing to give you that right. It doesn't exist above society. That's just the breaks.
> Funnily enough this is the exact sort of reasoning has been used to rationalize the most horrific atrocities ever perpetrated.
People find any reason to justify their actions. You'll find a lot of terrible things have justifications that overlap with non-terrible things. It doesn't really say much.
Yes, it does. Or at least that's the line of reasoning you seem to be disagreeing with.
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The entire line of enlightenment liberal thought that gave rise to our society fundamentally disagrees with your position. The right to liberty is not bestowed by the good graces of society, but is fundamental and unalienable.
> That's just the breaks.
This isn't a justification, it's a rationalization, and not a particularly good one. I am arguing that liberty, ie. the right to interact with other people on a consensual basis, ought to be the primary determining factor as to whether any particular action is legitimate. You have not replied with an argument on why this ought not to be.
> It isn't and can't be.
Yes, it can. Or at least, it can be more consensual. I hold that charity is a more ethical means of wealth redistribution than taxation, exactly because of charity's voluntary nature. I also hold that before the New Deal, the status quo was much more liberal. Government was a small entity mostly charged with administering the vital institutions that maintained the liberal order. There were of course still overreaches and failures, as with any human system. Do you really think that tearing down much of the New Deal can't be? I think it can, whether it will remains to be seen.
> You'll find a lot of terrible things have justifications that overlap with non-terrible things.
Then the justifications are wrong. The ends do not justify the means. Legitimate action should be possible to justify from first-principles in a manner that precludes illegitimate action. Otherwise how could we possibly come to an agreement on a distinction between the two? I would also note that the ideas I'm articulating do exactly that: provide a concrete, universalizable framework to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate.
You're quoting a document that is defining what rights it will give to the people. Whatever language you want to add around it can't get past the point that the document is giving rights to people and we as a society are agreeing to follow that document.
And please, this document is written in a time where many of its signers were holding slaves. Clearly not every man was considered equal.
> many of its signers were holding slaves
I can separate the idea from the people that held it. Can't you? I think this idea of liberty was a very good idea, and I support the expansion of those who qualify to be as free as described. What I'm arguing against is the erosion of the definition. We are not nearly as free now as free people were when the document was written. We are subject to much more authority.
It seems as though in your view, anything "society" does is legitimate, is that so?
> We are not nearly as free now as free people were when the document was written. We are subject to much more authority.
Tell this to a slave in 1776.
> It seems as though in your view, anything "society" does is legitimate, is that so?
No, "legitimate" is a judgement, I'm saying that what society does is what society does and there is no philosophy or higher abstraction defining it. It's just reality. I think if society is functioning in a way we disagree with, our only option is to try to convince enough people to change it. We can use language that tries to define philosophies around consent and individual rights in order to be persuasive but if society doesn't agree then you don't get those things, even if you really think that's how it should work.
Or whatever. "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
> "Luck" is just a dumb concept we humans use to handwave away edge cases.
Or maybe this view is just people who really want to believe there is something else. What is that something else?
I'm a fast technical learner and builder. I will never be where this guy is, in part because most of my resources are going into keeping myself afloat. I live my life as though "luck" isn't a factor (what's the use in declaring defeat?), but it's certainly not merit that separates the rich from the poor.
There are a lot of really, really, really smart people who never become generationally wealthy. Generational wealth almost always includes either luck, or intentionally heading down a morally reprehensible path.
You’ll have a tough time convincing me the guy who invented loom is smarter than or contributed more to mankind than Nikola Tesla.
Which is probably a perfect example because Edison took the morally reprehensible path.
Loom != DC or AC electricity its a helpful tool not transformational technology such as electricity.
Based on this blog and the needs of the overseeing oligarch, DOGE appears to be a therapy programme for millionaires and billionaires.
But we shouldn’t downplay what the program really intends to do: gut federal government spending rather than raising taxes on the wealthy to a sensible level.
Most federal government spending has very real benefits to the average person and should be thought of as more of an investment than a cost. But the DOGE mafia wants to cut programs that help the average person to protect their own fortunes.
E.g., the average person is harmed by shutting down the department of education. The wealthy who go to private school their whole lives are not.
The article author is essentially on the wrong side of the class war. I don’t really care how well he self-actualizes and I don’t think anyone should.
At this point he’s a <1%er who essentially thinks it’s a good idea to help the richest man alive fuck up the government.
Anyways, the quote is:
>> You are a pathetic victim of an idle mind.
I think this aptly describes the author.
http://www.mpafrancais.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/9/8/19984595/p...
(en français, of course. I link to it in its original language as I take issue with the usual translation of the very title as "Diversion", which immediately lacks the double-entendre of "Divertissement", which in french stands for both "diversion" and "entertainment")
Maybe what TFA author should do is spend some time standing on the shoulders of giants and read some philosophy?
I wouldn't be so sure about this, this might depend on the personality of the player. Some might think that introducing monetary stakes in fact ruins the game itself. And you can even take it further : the winning itself might become secondary - at which point playing the game is probably more akin to a form of artistic expression, infused with a different kind of meaning. (There are also games where you win, but in cooperation with others rather than against others.)
But then this passage also reminded me of this recent thread :
"More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market"
All of humanity's problems, stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. - attributed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
I think it's someone paraphrasing from the original text.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/69487/why-did...
Is there any single daily life situation where any person from around the globe and in the entire history of humankind who is not judgemental? Perhaps not at a job interview? Or maybe at dating or when trying to sell or buy something or simply when looking at that person?
I know I'm an asshole, but I've never had good experiences with people who call themselves super smart.
And of course, they were identifying all problems with the government on signal in very short, super effective meetings... yeah sure, dude.
What this guy is missing is creativity. And we don't have data to determine if it's contributor, detractor, or tangent to the position where he is at. I'd bet it's a bigly contributory, as gains from x-factors are called gambling.
[1] See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...
It's a common enough idea to tell someone rudderless to volunteer, but I feel like it's never tempered with the perspective of having volunteered and reflected on how the donated time has effected one's own life. Shaming someone rudderless into volunteering doesn't help them for exactly the obvious reasons it won't. At least no more than anything else you can lean hard into in life to avoid something else. Suggesting it as a fix to ennui is bad advice, the virtuousness of volunteering just masks how terrible it is.
my suggestion to the author would be: spend some time volunteering and get over yourself (by that i mean their own ego which seems to be putting them at the centre of everything).
in my experience, some things tend to come out of it
- gratitude for where i am at in life because i’m struggling less than the people i’m helping
- empathy because jesus yeah these people are struggling and i’m seeing just how much it’s affecting them
- humility because you know what, i really am limited in what i can actually do for these people, none of my “technical prowess” is actually useful here
- purpose because man i feel bad for these people and id like to do more to help than just showing up once a week
i don’t volunteer because it’s “virtuous”. fuck virtuosity.
i do it because i need to for my own sake — to experience the stuff above. it’s selfish-selflessness. by helping others i also help myself.
edit — added the one about humility which is quite important
edit 2 — donating money (philanthropy) is not the same as volunteering. in case there’s any confusion. boots on the ground are required.
What are these "obvious reasons" that volunteering won't help someone seeking direction?
I also don't follow why you haven't stated whether you've personally tried volunteering and whether it's "worked" for you, particularly when you seem dismissive of it and seem to looking for personal reasoning from others.
I do. I did not start to distract myself from other life issues, I joined because I wanted to help the org accomplish it's mission. It's rewarding and fulfilling, but I'm not using it as a mental defense from something else in my life. Whether or not it "worked" in that sense is simply not a thing for me.
It certainly shifted a lot of my mental focus. That's why I mentioned you can lean hard into things in life as a distraction for what's consuming you. And I've certainly used that mental defense over the years, it just happened that the things I used didn't include volunteering. And over the years I've noticed through others that volunteering is a particularly good way of self-deception that you're not just employing that defense.
That's why shaming someone into volunteering when they're rudderless bothers me. It's hard to argue against because it has intrinsic value AND can work in the "the true $whatever was the friends we made along the way" sense, plus the slim chance they find a new life purpose. But also maybe it doesn't and they really should have been shamed into joining the clergy instead because that's where they would have found their calling.
I'm confused by this belief. Anyone who has ever interacted with a big government in the West knows they are a knot of old and confusing regulations that cause every thing to be slow and expensive. A leftist should be happy that the state gets to accomplish more with it's existing budget.
Remember, Elon downsized Twitter by 80%, and then Twitter lost 80% of it's value. Simply firing a bunch of people doesn't accomplish more, it can actually destroy the value of the thing to begin with.
We've all seen this with republicans before. They take over, make things worse, and then use the fact that things are worse as an excuse for why the government shouldn't do the things it does. Elon isn't an expert in efficiency, he's an arsonist coming in to destroy the government so he and his buddies can extract more value out of this country.
Many people believe Elon in that he's trying to right the ship. Elon has been very clear on his ambitions and he isn't what you are trying to paint him as (a political republican). And the counter point is that Elon and large portion SV have remained in the center while the Dems marched steadily left leaving everyone in the center without a party.
Twitter was broken and full of bloat as is clearly obvious given that it is performing in many ways better than before engineering wise. It has become much more of a wild west given his free speech absolutism perspective but you can't possibly argue that what he didn't proved all the critics wrong - lights stayed on, kept shipping products. It certainly hasn't lost 80% value from his actions - he bought it at the height of ZIRP mania.
Now whether Elon has a enough inertia to actually be able to tackle some of the truly endemic issues of the Federal government is another question. Some of his new found friends will certainly poison the water but my take is he is authentic in his attempt to reduce deficit and lower the debt for the US while increasing growth.
The only way he is being authentic is if he is an idiot.
If he knew what he was talking about and was being authentic, he wouldn’t be publicly stating that he is going to cut $2 trillion from the budget.
Payroll for the entire Federal civilian workforce is only $300 billion.
I guess he could just be suffering from delusions of grandeur and he think he’s going to be able to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, or the Military.
Also do note that the current Twitter valuation is higher than we he bought it. Cutting 80% of the staff at twitter was the right move. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/elon-musks-startup-xai-now-120118...
> The new valuation means xAI has surpassed the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter in October 2022. X was valued at $9.4 billion by Fidelity, one of its investors, in September. The firm, which invested $19.6 million in the platform, has written down the value of its investment by nearly 79% since 2022.
Cutting 80% of the staff happened during the same time period when Fidelity dropped the evaluation by 79%. Cutting the staff doesn't seem like a good move at all.
The problem is that we picked a billionaire professional internet troll to do it whose stated goal is cutting 2 trillion from the budget.
And ignoring the fact that Elon is already running 3 companies, you couldn’t possibly find someone with more conflicts of interest than the richest man in the world.
Here’s a quote from Reason (hardly a left wing publication) that sums up how absurd their goal is.
“Musk and Ramaswamy's public pronouncements thus far do not inspire confidence. Musk's promise to save "at least $2 trillion" annually—approximately one-third of all (noninterest) federal spending—suggests a lack of familiarity with the federal budget. Roughly 75 percent of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans, and interest, and the final quarter includes priorities such as infrastructure, justice, border security, health research, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid, and disability benefits.”
Large organizations are inherently inefficient because id the non linear growth in communications overhead. If you don’t understand an organization, coming in and hacking away at it is insanely dangerous. How many companies have been ruined when hedge fund buys then and starts trying to “maximize efficiency”?
Bloat is a major issue that prevent anglosphere societies from achieving goals that poorer societies do easily. Ex: Spain or France do awesome public transit for 3 or 5 times less than we do.
And he’s not going to completely reorganize society so that we can build cheap public transit. Especially not by running a “government agency” that can’t do anything other than make recommendations to the president.
Do you know how many similar commissions we’ve had to reduce waste and spending?
Get rich? Move to a small or mid-sized city, marry your girl, have some kids, and get involved. Need to be busy? Run a local business that hires locals. Use your money and expertise to improve your community, which is a lot easier to do as a big fish in a small pond.
I'm not convinced it's the later. There IS a looming financial problem with our government and nobody else is doing anything about it. Federal spending is up trillions of dollars (per year) in the last 5 years with nothing to show for it. There is huge inefficiency and Elon wants to take a stab at fixing it. Yes, the man has his flaws, but he's trying to fix things nobody else will even try. Not sure why people have to hate on that.
BTW, I do expect so over-cutting will happen and there will be fallout from that. But hopefully the budget gets fixed and congress learns something about fiscal responsibility.